He said, not quite honestly, "Their straightest approach to Abro Pakriaa's village--your village--is in the west. Were there prisoners?"
"Abro Samiraa is not like to take prisoners. We took not any on the beach. Wrong?"
He smothered a sigh of exhaustion. "It may not matter." With Mijok, the stout giantess Tejron was moving among the wounded. Paul noticed a heap of torn cloth, all that remained of Earth-made shorts and jackets and overalls, ripped for bandages. Wright's idea, no doubt, and good: the pygmies' pounded-bark fabric was a poor second best. _After the war we can go naked--fair enough...._ He saw a pygmy woman shrink from Tejron's approach; she might be from one of the northern villages, her stoicism unequal to accepting the touch of the huge beings she would always have regarded as wild animals. Paul knelt, hoping to reassure her, as Tejron eased a bandage around a pierced abdomen. There would be internal bleeding. "You are from the north?"
She looked hurt that he did not know her face. "I am of Abro Brodaa's village." Then in spite of her shrinking her question was directed at Tejron: "Abro Brodaa has say to us--we are all one flesh. That--that----"
Tejron was able to say, "That is true." And while Paul searched for other words that might affirm, comfort, explain, the soldier died.
The only omasha now visible were soaring stragglers. The swarm would have found the army of Lantis--which must and would continue to advance. There was a limit to the gorging of the bat-winged beasts; they too could die on the spears. Meantime the lifeboat was gone, the boats were landing, in a moment of darkly sweet quiet which was the eye of the storm.
Paul checked the giant girl Lisson from firing at the landing party. "Save ammunition." He indicated a tall blue-flowered shrub a hundred yards out in the meadow. "We wait at the edge of the woods until they pass that bush, then charge them. If they break us down here, everyone is to fight west, away from the lake--_west_. Now run down the line, pass on these two orders." Lisson sped away, her golden fur bright and unstained. "Doc--get the wounded together, have the other women and Mijok take them west, beyond Sears' group, well back in the woods. Try to find out where Abara's got to with the olifants but send a runner back (if there's time)--don't come back yourself. And keep Mijok with you. I don't want him to do any more fighting if we can help it--it's tearing him up inside."